Marine radars are transitioning from high power magnetron transmitters to low power solid-state transmitters as they offer lower maintenance, more consistent performance, and the ability to be more discrete when transmitting. The challenge with low-power transmitters becomes keeping range resolution high while retaining a high signal-to-noise ratio (SNR). Two such methods are pulse compression and stepped frequency, both of which require advanced waveforms and associated methods to transmit and receive them while minimizing the non-ideal effects of the hardware to keep processing artifacts from cluttering the subsequent range profile estimates. A range profile represents the volume of space illuminated by the RF energy directed out of the radar antenna for a given pointing direction. Marine radars that use non-linear FM pulse compression waveforms (or any type of pulse compression waveform) are faced with the challenge of keeping range sidelobes low during the entire operation of the radar. Strong range sidelobes reduce dynamic range, create inaccurate size representations of targets, and clutter the radar display. Flat amplitude and linear phase across the waveform bandwidth is required to achieve minimum range sidelobes. Any phase or amplitude errors in the radar system will increase range sidelobes. These errors can stem from several effects:                Radar components that change as temperature and pressure change;        Non-linearities in the transmitter rise-time that are likely to vary for different waveforms;        Errors in the transmit and/or receive channels that are likely to vary for different waveforms;        Calibrating a system for one portion of the system bandwidth then using a different portion of the bandwidth; and        Calibrating a system for the average errors over the system bandwidth then using a portion of the bandwidth that differs from the average.        
Therefore, there exists a need for an improved marine radar system which lowers transmission power and offers consistent performance with a low maintenance requirement while maintaining or improving detection sensitivity, range resolution, and accuracy of the display.